Iwata acknowledges that consumers still don’t understand Wii U’s asymmetric gameplay
Asymmetric gameplay was intended to be one of the Wii U’s key features. Yet, it hasn’t caught on with consumers just yet.
This is something that Nintendo CEO Satoru Iwata acknowledged during Nintendo’s E3 2013 analyst briefing Q&A. Iwata also feels that Nintendo Land hasn’t been able to step into the same role as Wii Sports did for the Wii.
To remedy the situation, Nintendo will continue to release titles in order “to show how convenient and delightful it is to have the Wii U GamePad controller, and how it changes the gaming experience.” The company hopes that will games such as Pikmin 3, consumers will begin to think, “Indeed it is good to have a GamePad.”
“Asymmetric gameplay” is one of the important elements which differentiate Wii U from other products. Thus, we have released “Nintendo Land” as the software to make consumers understand the value of asymmetric gameplay. In the United States, we bundled it with the Wii U “Deluxe Set” which is a higher-end model equipped with 32GB of memory. We have received a lot of comments from consumers that the gameplay in “Nintendo Land” is interesting. However, we presume that they have not yet come up with the best words to easily explain how interesting it is to other people.
I would say that “Nintendo Land” has not fulfilled the same role as “Wii Sports” did when we bundled it with Wii.
Of course, we won’t remain silent and do nothing. We are going to release a variety of Wii U software, and with each title, we would like to show how convenient and delightful it is to have the Wii U GamePad controller, and how it changes the gaming experience.
In addition, we have also learned that the name “asymmetric gameplay” does not fully explain the GamePad’s value to consumers. As for the software going to be released from now on, we would like to describe the experience that the GamePad provides with a different expression in order to adequately convey its necessity to consumers and increase the number of consumers that think, “Indeed it is good to have a GamePad.” In this sense, starting with “Pikmin 3,” we aim to include functions that make good use of the GamePad that consumers can appreciate.
